Formatting Help

Hi everyone. Ok, I know how to reformat a computer, but I have a question. My computer has two hard drives, well actually three because two of them mirror each other on a RAID 0 configuration. Anyways, Windows is installed on my RAID 0 configured hard drive, which in total is 300 GB. My other hard drive that has nothing on it is only 120 GB. I want to switch Windows to that Hard Drive and clear the RAID 0 configured hard drive that it is installed on now.

Wow, hope thats not too confusing! :confused: Anyways, is there a way to do this, if so, how?

Yor computer has three hard drives. When we speak of RAID and partitions, we like to use the word VOLUMES in the server world to describe how the data is stored on your computer.

Backup your data first.

Then, you can boot from the CD-ROM, and destroy all of the volumes on your system, and then choose which one to install Windows back onto. Bear in mind that Windows likes to be installed on the Primary Master IDE drive, meaning the first IDE bus, master device. In the end, it doesn't matter which partition you install Windows to, just as long as your emergency recovery tools know which one to aim for.

:idea: If you are just looking to move the data, I might have an idea for you. Most of the newer HDDs come with bootable CDs that have utilities on them that will do a partition to partition data move. I've used it couple times where people were running out of space and wanted bigger HDDs. WD and Maxtor both have the same thing.

That's correct, cargenius. Deleting the partitions and then creating new ones in their place is probably the simplest and surest way to wipe a system and the procedure I'd recommend every time! If the 120Gb drive is an IDE one on the primary IDE channel, Windows will try to install there by default anyway.

But remember to back up the data first!
(You sound like you know what you're doing. That bit was for anyone else reading :))